A wide variety of gaming devices are now available to gamers and to casino operators in computerized form, from slot machines to games that are traditionally played live such as poker and blackjack. These computerized games provide many benefits to the game owner and to the gambler, including greater reliability than can be achieved with a mechanical game or human dealer, more variety, sound, and animation in presentation of a game, and a lower overall cost of production and management.
Computerized video game systems must be designed with many of the same concerns as their mechanical and table game ancestors—they must be fair, they must provide sufficient feedback to the gamer to make the game fun to play, and they must meet a variety of gaming regulations to ensure that both the machine owner and gamer are honest and fairly treated in implementing the game. Further, they must provide a gaming experience that is at least as attractive as the older mechanical gaming machine experience to the gamer, to ensure success in a competitive gaming market.
Many computerized wagering game systems have a variety of sound and graphical elements designed to attract and keep a game player's attention, such as sound effects, music, and animation. These game presentation features often include a variety of music, sound effects, and voices presented to complement a video presentation of the wagering game on a display.
But, many challenges are faced in presenting audio to enhance a wagering game. Sounds must be stored on the wagering game system, which requires storage space and is expensive despite many sounds being stored in a compressed format. Even when compressed, sounds must be decompressed to be played, resulting in consumption of significant processor resources.
Further, it is difficult to coordinate the playing of sounds with animation or wagering game activity presented on the screen, particularly when sounds and animations presented run for significant lengths of time. Starting and stopping various audio clips or sounds repeatedly can be distracting as a solution can also be problematic, as this requires management of a greater number of audio clips and the transition between audio clips is often audible due to DC offsets or other sharp transitions.
It is therefore desirable to better manage the audio presented in the computer wagering game.